It might seem too good to be true, but dark chocolate is good for you and scientists now know why. Dark chocolate helps restore flexibility to arteries while also preventing white blood cells from sticking to the walls of blood vessels. Both arterial stiffness and white blood cell adhesion are known factors that play a significant role in atherosclerosis. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140227092149.htm

That’s right: Coffee is the fountain of youth. Sort of. Yet another study shows that coffee drinking is correlated with longer life. I’m going to brew another cup momentarily!

Two new large studies suggest it might have been coffee that bubbled from the fountain of youth.

Both studies, one conducted in the U.S., one across 10 European countries, found that people who drank even a single cup of coffee a day — decaf and/or caffeinated — lived longer than people who didn’t drink any coffee.

Still, the consistency of findings across different ethnic groups in the U.S. study and different methods of preparation in the European study — espressos in Italy, watered down coffee in Scandinavian countries — adds credence to the notion that coffee protects against many of the leading causes of death.

And as a trio of Johns Hopkins University scientists wrote in an editorial accompanying the two papers, “a protective effect of coffee is biologically plausible.” The studies and the editorial were published online recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine.